Ecology, Environmental Science & More

Alan Townsend is an ecosystem ecologist and Professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. On July 1, Alan will become Dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1988 from Amherst College, and a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from Stanford University in 1994. Alan has served in leadership positions at university, national and international levels, including Director of CU-Boulder’s Environmental Studies Program, Director of the Division of Environmental Biology at the National Science Foundation, and the current Co-Director of the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program. He and his lab group study how ecosystems work, how they are changing, and what those changes might mean for all of us. Alan is a strong advocate of science communication in multiple venues; he was an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow in 2001 and one of the inaugural Google Science Communication Fellows in 2011.Townsend CV